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New face

Morning everyone, just a quick post from me today to share this huge new face, I created on an A3 mixed media paper.

As you may remember I have been experimenting with different types of watercolour paints over the last few months especially with backgrounds and using it in mixed media pieces. I have been asked several times how I created my backgrounds so have planned a video to show how, which I will share once completed. However, for this background I used infusion activated with water and dried quickly to retain the the pattens of the colour.

I started with my ink drawing, I let her unfold herself onto the canvas with no reference photo. I prefer this way as the personality shows itself better than using a photo. Although I am using reference photos more when I see an expression I want to capture.

I started to lay in some colour, I spritzed my canvas first, as with all watercolour painting you need the surface wet to allow the paint movement. If you use the paint on a dry surface it is sucked up with very little movement until more water is added. I will show some experiments with watercolours on my video. I also use Sable Brushes as these are my fav, I use quite large brushes the face was a size 10 round. It gives lots of coverage but has a nice tip for more detailed work.

Around the face you can see the infusions from Paper Artsy, i love these little clouds of colour, bursting out in every direction. For the face I used Prima Watercolour set called Decatent Pies, lovely paints but this set doesn't have basic primary colours so if starting out with colours I would recommend a basic colour set. However these little tins will take some more half pans so you could add any colours you can't live without. I like the tin as it unfolds has two areas to mix your paint, it's also a good size to take out especially using a waterbrush.

I continued to add more colour building up the layers of colour until satisfied. The last few months are my only time with water colours so I'm no expert, and can only share my experience as I'm also self taught. So my work is all trial and error.
You can see below that I've blended in the background using the the brush and some watercolour paint. I balance the composition by adding some darker hues in the bottom right. My style is quite loose both with the drawing and painting and I love this illustrative style of working.

To finish I added some black pencil to areas to strengthen the lines which helped to bring the image forward.

I hope you like this little tutorial, I plan to do more in depth tutorials on the blog so pop back and see what I'm up to.